On mythological epigrams.

French Amazon of never-dying fame,Virgin untouched by men and by men feared,Nor Venus in her eyes nor young DesireBut Mars and Terror and the bloody Weird—France owes the Salic Law to her alone,And hers is the true king on the true throne.Let none lament her death who was all fireAnd never, or by fire alone, should die.[8]

I have ventured to cite this that the reader may see quite clearly what is involved in this kind of falsehood and how much it is repugnant to nature: namely, that something is alleged the contrary of which might as plausibly be affirmed. For Grotius might have written no less foolishly:

Justly lament her death: she who was fireShould not by fire but by cold water die.

Actually, if we wish to get to the bottom of this fault we will find that men are not led to it by nature but driven to it by lack of skill. For they would not fly to the refuge of falsehood for any other reason than that they are not vigorous enough to elicit beauty from the subject itself. Truth, indeed, is limited and defined, but the realm of lies is unlimited and undefined. Hence the one offers difficulties for invention, the other is obvious and easy, and for that reason also is to be scorned.

Moreover, falsehood occurs not only in propositions but also in the delineation of feeling, as, for instance, when feelings are ascribed to a character other than those which nature and the subject-matter demand. You will find this fault in an epigram by Vulteius, which was for this reason rejected:

I viewed one day the marble stoneThat hides a man in sin well-known.I sighed and said, "What is the pointOf such expense? This tomb might serveTo house kings and the blood of kingsThat now conceals a villainous corpse."I burst in tears that copiouslyFlowed from my eyes down both my cheeks.A stander-by took me to taskIn some such words, I think, as these:"Aren't you ashamed, be who you may,To mourn the burial of this plague?"But I replied, "My tears are shedFor the lost tomb, not his lost head."[9]

It was surely foreign to nature to represent a man weeping copiously because a villain and scoundrel had been buried in a noble tomb, for the funeral honors paid to scoundrels excite anger and indignation rather than pity and tears. The poet, consequently, adopted an erroneous feeling when he wept where he should have been angry and wrathful.

Untruth, then, is a considerable fault, one that is quite widespread and one that embraces many sub-divisions. Under this category falls especially the use of mythological propositions, the common vehicle of poets when they have nothing to say. We have rejected many epigrams that are faulty in this kind, as, for example, Grotius on the Emperor Rudolph, which is too crowded with myths:

Not Mars alone has favored you, Invincible,At whom as enemy barbarian standards shake,But the Divine Community with gifts adore you,And with this in especial from the wife of Zephyr:She to the Dutch Apelles did perpetual springOrdain, and meadows living by the painter's hand.Alcinous' charm is annual, and Adonis' gardens,Nor do the Pharian roses bloom long in that air;Antique Pomona of Semiramis has boasted,And yet deep winter climbs the summit of her roof.How shall your honors fail? The garlands that you wearBeseem Imperial triumph, which time may not touch.[10]

I know there are other things to be censured in this epigram, but I note here only that one fault which it was quoted to illustrate.

To the same general category may be referred most puns, the point of which usually rises from some untruth. For example, in Sannazaro's well-known epigram:

Happy has built twin bridges on the Seine:Happy the Seine may call her Pontifex.[11]

If you takePontifexin the sense of "builder of bridges" the thought is true, but pointless; consequently, for there to be a point the wordPontifexmust be taken in the sense of "Bishop", and in this sense it will be false that the Pontifex is happy. Similarly, in another epigram of some reputation:

They say you're treating Cosma for his deafness,And that you promised, French, a definite cure;But you can't bring it off for all your deftness:He'll hear ill of himself while tongues endure.[12]

Takeaudireas referring to the sense of hearing and the thought is false, since that physical defect is curable; take it as referring to a good reputation, and the thought will again be false and inept, for it is false and inept that a doctor will labor in vain to cure a defect of the ears because he cannot medicine to a diseased reputation.

All puns are embarrassed by such faults, while on the other hand their charm is quite thin, or rather nonexistent. Formerly,it is true, in an earlier age there was some praise for that kind of thing, and so Cicero and Quintilian are said to have derived polished witticisms from the device of double-meaning; now, however, it is rightly held in great contempt, so much so that men of taste not only do not hunt for puns but even avoid them. They are, one must admit, more bearable, or at least less objectionable when they come spontaneously; but anyone who brings out ones he has thought up or indicates that he himself is pleased with them is quite properly judged to be inexperienced in society. Hence it is that epigrams whose elegance is derived from puns are held of no account. For since verses are only composed by labor and diligence he is justly considered to be a weak and narrow spirit who wastes time in fitting such trivial wit into verse. One should add, too, that there is another disadvantage in puns, that they are so imbedded in their own language that they cannot be translated into another. For these reasons we have admitted few punning epigrams into this anthology, and those only as examples of a faulty kind.

In the category of false ideas must be reckoned the hyperbolical. These are not false in a given word, for we dealt with this above, but false in the whole train of thought. Of this kind is that epigram of Ausonius, the absurdity of which is unbearable:

Riding in state, as on an elephant,Faustus fell backwards off a silly ant;Abandoned, tortured to the point of deathBy the sharp hooves, his soul stayed on his breathAnd his voice broke: "Envy," he cried, "begone!Laugh not at my fall! So fell Phaethon."[13]

Ausonius was imitating in this epigram the Greeks, who were quite open to this sort of bad imitation, as may be seen in their Anthology which is stuffed full of such hyperboles. A good many fall into the same fault either because their talent is weak orbecause they write for the unskilled—a consideration which should move those who have no compunction about reading, let alone praising, the silly tales of Rabelais which are filled with stupid hyperboles.

Furthermore, debatable and double-edged ideas, about which the reader is in doubt whether they be false or true, fall under the same category of falseness. For this doubtfulness, since it takes away all pleasure, removes also the beauty. For this reason I have never approved the conclusion of Martial's epigram:

Equal the crime of Antony and Photinus:This sword and that severed a sacred head—The one head laurelled for your triumphs, Rome!The other eloquent when you would speak.Yet Antony's case was worse than was Photinus':One for his master moved, one for himself.[14]

The reader is bothered by a sort of quiet annoyance that the poet should so confidently take a dubious idea for a certain one. He might easily argue against the poet that on the contrary it seemed to him that a man who commits a crime for his master is more at fault than one who commits it for himself, and he could support his position with rational arguments. For one who sins for his own advantage is driven to his deed by such emotions as rage, lust, and fear, and these as they diminish the power of willing in like measure diminish the magnitude of the offence. But one who effects a crime at another's behest comes coldly to the deed, a fact that convicts him of a far greater depravity. One could allege these and similar lines of argument against Martial's position, and could reverse the sense of his distich so that it read no less irrationally:

Yet Antony's case was better than Photinus':One for his master moved, one for himself.

Hence this whole category of controvertible ideas lacks literary merit and should be studiously avoided by those who aim at beauty, which in the last analysis is to be found in truth alone, and in truth of such a sort that as soon as it is proposed the reader recognises as true and accepts it.

The second virtue of ideas with respect to the subject-matter is that they should agree with its inner nature: that is, that they should be elicited out of the very inners of the subject and not far-fetched or drawn from external accidents which are only the accompaniments of things. By this rule we have been delivered from numerous frigid epigrams, of which I subjoin a few examples:

Foreign and far-fetched is Owen's on a lyre:

That there is concord in so diverse chordsDiscordant mankind some excuse affords.[15]

As if nothing were more pertinent for making men ashamed of their discords than the concord of strings on a lyre.

From concomitant accidents, and not from the very heart of the subject itself, is drawn this epigram of Germanicus Caesar, though the verses are otherwise sufficiently polished:

The Thracian boy at play on the stiff iceOf Hebrus broke the waters with his weightAnd the swift current carried him away,Except that a smooth sherd cut off his head.The childless mother as she burned it said:"This for the flames I bore, that for the waves."[16]

Certainly the mother had a deeper and more native cause of grief than that her son was destroyed partly by water and partly by fire; she would have grieved no less had he perished wholly in water or wholly in fire. The whole reason for grief, then, ought not be sought in such a slight circumstance, which was an accompaniment of and not the grounds for grief.

Negative descriptions labor under the same fault, namely those in which are enumerated not what the endowments of the subject are but what they are not. This is justly censured in one of Barlaeus' epigrams, which is in other respects quite polished:

Of royal Bourbon blood, by whose aid onceBelgium believed that God inclined to her;For sceptered fathers famed, more famed for war,And by Astraea's doom of rare renown;Whom War as general, Peace lauds unarmed,To whom so many lands and seas are slaves;Neither the fleece drinking barbarian dyeI send you, nor Sidonian artifice,Nor Indian ivory, Dalmatian stone,Nor the choice incense that delights grave Jove,Nor warring eagles, no, nor cities stormed,Nor plundered canvas from the conquered sea;Louis, I give you Christ as King and Lord,Titles not foreign to the ones you bear:For I would send you, greatest of all kings,Than which I cannot more, I send you God.[17]

Surely it is a long way around to enumerate what you will not give the King in order to make clear how slight your gift is. Besides, the conclusion is harsh in that a book about Christ is called God and Christ, as if Christ and a book about him were the same thing. But this is a commonplace absurdity of what one may call the dedicatorygenre, in which writers almost always speak of their book as if there were no difference between the book itself and its subject: thus, if they write about Caesaror Cato, "Caesar and Cato," they say, "prostrate themselves before you;" If about Cicero, "Look," they say, "Cicero addresses you and takes you as patron:" all of which are correctly to be reckoned in the category of false statements.

The harmony of idea and subject is a matter fairly easy to understand, but the attuning of idea and men's character is more difficult to grasp and requires more painstaking treatment. For in this inquiry the whole scope of human nature must be thoroughly examined, and our silent inclinations and aversions must be laid open so that we will know how to avoid the one and comply with the other. For it cannot be that anything should please that offends nature, or anything displease that complies with natural inclinations. We will touch briefly on some of these points, but only on those that suffice to our purposes.

In the first place, there is in the nature of man an aversion to the shameful and the obscene, and this the more powerful in the best and well-educated natures. All obscene ideas offend this sense of shame to such an extent that they are regarded as alien to nature, ugly, and uncivilised. Nor does it matter that some corrupt souls laugh at them. For civilization, as we have said, does not consist in agreement with a corrupt, but with a virtuous and moral, nature. Consequently, absolutely nothing of this kind is to be found in the conversation of respectable men, and is only resorted to by those who lack any feeling for Christianity as well as for genuine society and civilization.

Therefore we have excluded all shameful and licentious epigrams not only in deference to morals and religion but also to good taste and civilization. Of this Catullus and Martial in Antiquity witness that they had no perception at all, for they filled up their works with a good deal of ill-bred filth,and on that account must be regarded not only as dissolute but also as vulgar, uncultivated, and, to use Catullus' own phrase, "goat-milkers and ditch-diggers."[18]

But it is not only faulty and unpolished to offer the reader a shameful and obscene picture but also in general to depict whatever is cheap, ugly, and unwelcome. Hence those epigrams cannot be regarded as beautiful and polished whose subject is a toothless hag, a poetaster with a threadbare cloak, a rank old goat, a filthy nose, or a glutton vomiting on the table—all of which are a fertile ground of jokes for actors—since ugliness of that sort can never be redeemed by the point.

For this reason we have admitted none of such kind in the epigrams of Martial which we have subjoined to this treatise, and a good many epigrams that we have run across we have put aside, such as Buchanan's in which he depicts the unattractive and unpleasant picture of a lank old man:

While Naevolus yells he can outbellow Stentor,And roars and roars, "All men are animals,"He has slipped by almost his ninetieth yearAnd bent senility shakes his weak step.Now three hairs only cling to his smooth head,And he sees what a night-owl sees at dawn.The snot is dripping from his frosty nose,And stringed saliva falls on his wet breast—Not an odd tooth in his defenceless gums,Not an old ape so engraved with wrinkles.Naevolus, for shame leave this frivolityAnd no more cry, "All men," since you are none.[19]

Again, the baseness of the subject and the hardly pleasant or civilized image of a hanging man is a fault in this epigram of Sannazaro's, although it has an element of humor:

In your desire to learn your fortune, sir,You questioned every tripod, every rune;"You'll stand out above gods and men," at lastAnswered the god in truth-revealing voice.What arrogance you drew from this! You wereImmediately lord of the universe.Now you ascend the cross. God was no cheat:The whole world lies spread out beneath your feet.[20]

This is fairly respectable and merely low. But the cynical license of Martial and Catullus, by which they speak of many things that are not simply morally foul but such as decent society demands be removed from sight and hearing, must be regarded as altogether shameless and vulgar. For this reason men of taste never mention favorably Catullus'Annales Volusi cacata charta, or Martial's

et desiderio coacta ventrisgutta pallia non fefellit una[21]

And there are many others a good deal more despicable which cannot be adduced even as examples of a fault. Assuredly Antiquity was too forbearing toward this sort of thing, and I have often wondered how Cicero could have been tolerated in the Roman Senate when he inveighed against Piso:

Do you not remember, blank, when I came to see you about the fifth hour with Gaius Piso, you were coming out of some dirty shack, slippers on your feet and your face and beard covered; and when you breathed on us that low tavern air from your fetid mouth, you apologized on grounds of ill health, saying that you were taking a kind of wine treatment? When we had accepted your explanation—what else could we do?—we stood a while in the smell and fume of the joints you patronize until you kicked us outby the impudence of your answers and the stench of your belches.[22]

Men with some gentleness of nature have an inborn hatred of spite, especially of such as mocks bodily flaws or reversals of fortune, or, finally, anything that happens beyond the individual's responsibility. For, since no man feels himself free of such strokes of chance, he will not take it easily when they are torn down and laughed at. The Vergilian Dido spoke with human feeling when she said:Not unaware of ill I learned to aid misfortune.[23]and the good will of the reader rises quietly in her favor. Likewise, Seneca says nicely:It is not witty to be spiteful.[24]On the other hand they act inhumanely who triumph over misfortune and upbraid what was not guiltily effected, to such an extent that they arouse a feeling of aversion and alienation in the hearts of their readers.

Accordingly we have admitted only a few of this kind, and have rejected a great many, as, for example, Owen's frigid and spiteful epigram:

Look, not a hair remains on your bright skull.The hairs on your inconstant brow are null.With every last hair lost behind, ahead,What has the bald man left to lose? His head.[25]

Nor do we greatly care for many of the same kind in Martial, which nevertheless were not omitted for the reasons given above.[26]

It would be a long task to assemble all the natural aversions, nevertheless we may add a few more which have removed a whole host of epigrams from this anthology. Beyond thosealready mentioned, nature finds distasteful long circumlocutions and the piling up of a single point with varying phrase; for nature burns with a desire to find out, ever hastens to the conclusion, and is impatient at being detained by much talk unless there is a special reward. Consequently wordy epigrams beget a good deal of loathing, especially those that do not sufficiently balance their length with the magnitude of the idea. Some of Martial's are burdened with this fault; sometimes they accumulate too many commonplace compliments or are too petty in enumeration. For example, in this epigram to what point are so many trite similes piled up?

Her voice was sweeter than the agëd swan,None would prefer the Eastern pearl before her,Or the new-polished tooth of Indic beasts,Or the first snow, lilies untouched by hand;She who breathed fragrance of the Paestan rose,Compared with whom the peacock was but dull,The squirrel uncharming, and unrare the phoenix,Erotion, is still warm on a new pyre.[27]

Similarly, why in another well-known epigram is the same idea repeated again and again?

Oh not unvalued object of my love,Flaccus, the darling of Antenor's hearth,Forego Pierian songs, the sisters' dances:No girl among them ever gave a dime.Phoebus is nought; Minerva has the cash,Is shrewd, is only usurer to the gods.What's there in Bacchus' ivy? The black treeOf Pallas bends with mottled leaves and weight.On Helicon there's only water, wreaths,The divine lyres, and profitless applause.Why do you dream of Cirrha, bare Permessis?The forum is more Roman and more rich.There the coins clink, but round the sterile chairsAnd desks of poets only kisses rustle.[28]

In the same way that nature is displeased with wordiness, she is displeased with ideas that are too commonplace, for it is a kind of loquacity to bubble on with the commonplace and trite, since it is the purpose of speech to reveal what isn't known, not to repeat what is known and worn-out. Countless epigrams have been excluded from this selection for this fault, but since there is nothing more common I will omit offering examples.

Not a little displeasing, also, is an assiduity in trifling which withdraws the mind from solid subject-matter out of which true beauty springs. Plays on words, puns and other playing around of that kind, unless they come to the judgement of the pen within the bounds of art, are not so much figures of speech as faults of style, and in those epigrams where the point rests solely in these there is nothing thinner, especially when they are so peculiar to one language that they cannot be translated into another. On this basis we have passed over such frivolous witticisms as Owen's:

Rope ends the robber, death is his last haul;The gallows gets the gangster—if not all,If many get away, God gives no hope:It's an odd thief dies with no coffin rope.[29]

A little more humorous is that of another poet on the Swiss killed at night, though it too is faulty:

Annihilated in night snow by a nut stick,I snow, night, nut, now, and annihilation know.[30]

We must carefully avoid all these natural sources of aversion and no less gratify natural inclinations if we wish to attain that beauty we aim at. For self-love is so strongin men that they can hear nothing with pleasure unless it flatters them with their own feelings. For which reason those epigrams have correctly been judged best that penetrate deeper into those feelings and present to the reader's mind an idea recognised not only by the interior light but also by the interior feeling as quite true, so that he can be seduced into embracing it: for example, Martial's:

I scorn the fame purchased with easy bloodAnd praise the man who can be praised alive.[31]

For, since everyone hates death and longs for praise and glory, there is no one who would not be glad if he could be praised without dying. Another example is that of the old poet:

Put high disdain, deciduous hope put by:Live with yourself who with yourself must die.[32]

For nature has, as Quintilian said, a kind of elevation intolerant of anything above it[33]that fawns on anyone who bids it be contemptuous of a pride in riches.

This much on the general sources of beauty and ugliness will be sufficient for passing judgement on anygenreof poems. Nevertheless, this should be adapted to the particular nature, laws, and principles of the epigram, and so it will not be out of point to add a few remarks on the epigram itself.

"Epigram", as Scaliger observes, is the same thing as "inscription"; but since there are inscriptions of a good many things the former word has been applied to short poems inasmuch as epigrams of that sort used to be inscribed on monuments and statues;[34]and from this the word has been extended generally to short poems. The epigram is defined, then, as a short poem directly pointing out some thing, person, or deed.[35]

There are those who locate its formal principle in the serious or witty idea that forms the conclusion, and so insist on this that they deny anything is an epigram that lacks such a conclusion.[36]But this is an error. There are some epigrams, and highly cultivated ones, that have an equable elevation throughout and nothing of especial note in the conclusion, as in this of a contemporary writer:

That on insurgent serpents breathing peace,On unplumed eagles trembling, on tame pards,And lions whose low necks accept the yoke,Louis looks out, sublime on a bronze horse,Nor fingers shaped this nor the craftsman's forgeBut worth and God's fortune accomplished it.The armed venger of faith, trustee of peace,Ordained, for all to reverence, this, and badeRise in the royal place the reverend bronze,That, the long perils past of civil strife,And enemies subdued by prosperous arms,Louis should ever triumph in the master city.[37]

Again, in some epigrams there is a straightforward neatness and a gentle and dry humor that pleases, as may be seen in some of Catullus' epigrams which we have put in this anthology.

Some go to the contrary extreme and not only do not require such conclusions but even scorn them. These are for the most part the outrageous lovers of Catullus who, as long as they finish off some limp little dirge in hendecasyllabics, feel that they are marvellously charming and polished, although there is nothing more empty than such verses or nothing easier to do if a man has acquired a little practice in Latin.

How little effort, for instance, shall we imagine the conclusion of this epigram cost Borbonius, fashioned as it is according to the model of Catullus?

Wherefore come, O Roman muses,Full of honey and of graces,Learned verses of good Pino;I embrace you, just Camenae,All day long I read you gladlyIn this mortifying season,Time of tears and time of penance,Harsh and troublesome, by Jupiter![38]

You can see where the perverse imitation of Catullus has conducted a Christian, in other respects devout, so that in discussing a Christian fast day he had no fear of using the profane name of Jove. But, leaving this aside, what is more inept than the verseHarsh and troublesome, by Jupiter!, however Catullan. Nevertheless, Borbonius thought his epigram concluded elegantly in that line because he found in Catullus a similar one.[39]But, leaving aside such spiritless imitators, one can truly affirm of those ideas that conclude epigrams that there is a good deal of elegance in them when they are themselves distinguished and nicely cohere with the preceding chain of thought. For, since nothing so sticks in the reader's mind as the conclusion, what is better than to put there what especially you want to fix in his soul. Consequently, those epigrams are rightly censured as faulty that go in the order of anti-climax or in which the conclusion is sort of added on or appended to the rest and does not neatly develop out of the preceding verses. This fault is discernible in the following epigram, though in other respects it is distinguished:

You that a stranger in mid-Rome seek RomeAnd can find nothing in mid-Rome of Rome,Behold this mass of walls, these abrupt rocks,Where the vast theatre lies overwhelmed.Here, here is Rome! Look how the very corpseOf greatness still imperiously breathes threats!The world she conquered, strove herself to conquer,Conquered that nothing be unconquered by her.Now conqueror Rome's interred in conquered Rome,And the same Rome conquered and conqueror.Still Tiber stays, witness of Roman fame,Still Tiber flows on swift waves to the sea.Learn hence what Fortune can: the unmoved falls,And the ever-moving will remain forever.[40]

The last four verses are completely unnecessary and contain a frigid point by which the lustre of the preceding is dimmed.

The material of epigrams comprises any subject and anything that can be said on it—in fact, there are as many kinds of epigrams as there are kinds of things that can be said. We will notice here particularly those kinds from which the special powers of each can be understood.

There is, then, a kind of epigram that is elevated, weighty, sublime, pursuing a noble subject in noble lines and concluding with a noble sentiment. Such is Martial's on Scaevola:

That hand that sought a king and found a slaveWas thrust to burn up in the sacred fire:So cruel a portent the good enemyAppalled, who bade him carried from the fire.The hand the regicide endured to burn,The king could not endure to see it done.Greater the glory of the hand deceived!Had it not erred it had accomplished less.[41]

Of the same sort are Grotius' epigrams on Ostend and on the sailing carriages, and Barclay's on Margaret of Valois.[42]

There is another sort somewhat lower in style but weighty and profitable in idea: for example, that truly distinguishedone of Martial:

In that you follow the strict rules of CatoAnd yet are willing to remain aliveAnd will not run bare-breasted on the swordYou do exactly as I'd have you do:I scorn the fame purchased with easy bloodAnd praise the man who can be praised alive.[43]

And this:

In private she mourns not the late-lamented;If someone's by her tears leap forth on call.Sorrow, my dear, is not so easily rented.They are true tears that without witness fall.[44]

And that genuinely golden epigram:

That I now call you by your nameWho used to call you sir and master,You needn't think it impudence.I bought myself with all I had.He ought to sir a sir and masterWho's not himself, and wants to haveWhatever sirs and masters want.Who can get by without a slaveCan get by, too, without a master.[45]

However, of all kinds of epigram that kind is generally thought to be most properly epigrammatic which is distinguished by a witty and ingenious turn that deeply penetrates the soul. Martial excels in this kind, as in this one:

You serve the best wines always, my dear sir,And yet they say your wines are not so good.They say you are four times a widower.They say ... A drink? I don't believe I would.[46]

and in this:

Though you send presents to old men and widowsWhy should I call you, sir, munificent?There's nothing lower, dirtier than you onlyWho can denominate enticements gifts.These are the sly hooks for the greedy fish,These are the clever baits for the wild beasts.I will instruct you what it is to giveIf you are ignorant: give, sir, to me.[47]

Some are lower in style but witty and pleasant, and have a glowing simplicity, as can be illustrated by another of Martial's:

"An epic epigram," I heard you say.Others have written them, and so I may."But this one is too long." Others are too.You want them short? I'll write two lines for you:As for long epigrams let us agreeThey may be skipped by you, written by me.[48]

And, indeed, of all the special capabilities of the epigram none is more difficult to realise or more rarely achieved than the adroit handling, the suitable and easy unfolding, of the subject so that nothing is redundant, nothing wanting, nothing out of order, obscure, or tangled up in verbiage, and yet at the same time nothing too unexpected, nothing not adequately prepared for. Martial is pre-eminent in this; he develops his subjects so aptly, clearly, and perceptively that he obtains for ideas of no special note otherwise a good deal of distinction by the charm of the handling. For example, what could be more resourcefully developed than this epigram?

Back to Index Next